Race at the Times

"Much of the book is devoted to the racial slights Boyd suffered during his 20 years at the paper. White subordinates bridled at taking orders from him; white superiors alternately patronized and betrayed him. “The Times was a place where blacks felt they had to convince their white peers that they were good enough to be there,” he writes. He felt he could speak openly about the subject with his white colleagues only rarely — for example, while edit ing a series on race in America that would win a Pulitzer Prize: “I wanted them to understand why blacks think about race so often. Whether they are discriminated against or ignored or feared, they know the reaction is probably triggered by race.”"